Inside VR & AR (May 11th, 2018)

Google’s Head of VR & AR Clay Bavor says that the next generation of controllers will not come to the Lenovo Mirage Solo headset. The Mirage Solo is a 6DoF headset (which allows users to physically walk around and play room-scale VR) but the device ships with a 3DoF controller, unlike the forthcoming Oculus Santa Cruz headset, which features both 6DOF head and controller tracking. It's not clear that Mirage Solo users would benefit from the next generation of 6DoF controllers anyway since lots of the titles on Google's Daydream platform are designed for 3DoF input. — CNET

The VR experience for HBO's Silicon Valley was released this week. The last episode of the show's fifth season airs this weekend, and the Silicon Valley: Inside the Hacker Hostel experience is available now on Oculus Rift. Developers recreated the show's set using the Unreal Engine 4 and users find a secret message, help the characters out of a coding crisis, and check out hundreds of interactive objects. — VENTUREBEAT

Japan Display Inc. developed a high pixel density, 3.25-inch 1001ppi LCD designed specifically for VR headsets. Japan Display, a joint venture between Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba, announced their plan to ship the displays at the end of March 2019 and that they will continue to work on higher resolution displays in the future. The new display is lighter and slightly more compact than the previous 803ppi panel, has an improved latency of 2.2 ms and operates at a 120Hz refresh rate, higher than the 90Hz rate of PC VR headsets including HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. — ROADTOVR

The software firm DataView VR has announced a platform for immersive data visualization. The company's technology makes it possible to map multiple, complicated variables in 3D. DataView VR is working in the same immersive data viz space as other companies, including the startup Virtualitics and the Project New View VR mapping tool by Adobe. — VRFOCUS

Chinese camera phone vendor Oppo gave a demo of a live 3D video call using 5G cell phones.Oppo is working with U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm on the technology, which they say will be available in six months. The demo used an Oppo R11s prototype device with a depth-sensing camera and sent the data over a 5G connection to another device. — VENTUREBEAT

A group of student developers has created a player vs. player Pokémon AR game. The app is still a work in progress but it uses Apple’s ARkit and Android’s ARCore+ platforms and works across devices because players connect via Bluetooth rather than WiFi. Niantic's hit AR game Pokémon GO, released two years ago, still does not offer player vs. player battles or tournaments. — VRSCOUT

Japan Display Inc. developed a high pixel density, 3.25-inch 1001ppi LCD designed specifically for VR headsets. Japan Display, a joint venture between Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba, announced their plan to ship the displays at the end of March 2019 and that they will continue to work on higher resolution displays in the future. The new display is lighter and slightly more compact than the previous 803ppi panel, has an improved latency of 2.2 ms and operates at a 120Hz refresh rate, higher than the 90Hz rate of PC VR headsets including HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. — ROADTOVR

Inside VR & AR

The present and future of virtual/augmented reality news and technology